Doors will open at 1 p.m. to give you a chance to tour the Environmental Learning Center's Water's Many LA Ways - so you can nerd out on your water footprint, recycled water, urban runoff, the science behind water treatment, and much more!

About the Book

Dear Reader,

For our May Times Book Club pick, we're turning our attention to the most burning issue facing California: water.

I’m pleased to announce Marc Reisner’s “Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water” as a jumping off point for an in-depth, nuanced discussion about the crisis posed by the current mega-drought.

The great historian Bernard De Voto once said, “The West begins where the average annual rainfall drops below 20 inches.” It’s this scarcity that both unites the West and puts us at odds with each other.

We and our neighbors in Las Vegas draw on the Colorado River; we and our neighbors in San Francisco rely on water from the Sierras. To complicate things further, we have hyper-local water delivery systems and a tangle of regulations, statues, treaties, and court decrees ranging from city to international levels.

With the help of “Cadillac Desert,” additional readings, and a group of distinguished water experts, we aim to move beyond a zero-sum blame game of farmers vs. urban dwellers, North vs. South, or California vs. Nevada.